Pause and come back to the room before going on
Stop the chair dialogue, open your eyes, and let your feet, breath and surroundings tell you that you are here, now.
Why it works
When the feeling in an exercise rises past what you can hold, feeling and a sense of the present can go offline together, and the old scene starts to feel like it is happening again. Slowing down and orienting to things around you (the floor, the light, the sound of your own breath) helps the body return to the range where you can feel something and still think. Staying in the chair while flooded tends to deepen the flood rather than finish anything.
How to do it
- Stop the chair work now. You do not have to finish the conversation, and the empty chair can stay where it is.
- Stand up or stay seated, and put both feet flat on the floor. Notice the pressure of the floor under them.
- Open your eyes and slowly name five things you can see in the room, out loud or silently.
- Let your breathing find its own pace; you do not need to change it. Hold something with some texture, like a blanket, a mug or a cushion, and notice how it feels in your hands.
- Do something ordinary, like making a drink, washing your face or stepping outside for a minute.
- Come back to the exercise another day, only once you feel steady, and ideally with a trained person beside you for the chair work.
Evidence
Treleaven (2018) and Ogden, Minton and Pain (2006) are clinical texts that describe grounding and staying within a tolerable range of arousal. Siegel (1999) describes that range as a 'window of tolerance', the zone where a person can still think and feel at once. These are clinical texts, not trials of grounding for this specific exercise. (clinical)
No source here tests this pause inside the empty-chair exercise. The steps are general grounding practice from clinical texts and are not a substitute for care. If the shaking or crying does not ease, or you do not feel safe, reach a person (see the next practice).
Sources
- Treleaven, D. A. (2018). Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing (foreword by Willoughby Britton). New York: W. W. Norton.
- Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy. New York: W. W. Norton.
- Siegel, D. J. (1999). The Developing Mind: Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal Experience. New York: Guilford Press.
Common mistake
Pushing through the crying or shaking to reach the ending you planned, because the exercise feels half-finished. Unfinished is fine; the chair will still be there another day.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for The Empty Chair Technique: Finishing What Was Never Said
- Stop doing this alone and reach a person
If the chair work leaves you flooded, unsafe, or with thoughts of not being here, reach a real person now.
- Notice the unfinished business
Recognise the relationship that still pulls at you, and name the feeling that never got resolved.
- Put the person in the empty chair and speak to them
Imagine the person in a chair facing you and talk to them directly, in the present tense.
- Say what was never said, anger and hurt separately
Let the old complaint become specific, and give the anger and the sadness each their own voice.
- Name the need they never met
Tell the person in the chair what you needed from them and did not get.
- Switch chairs and answer as them
Sit in their chair, become them for a few minutes, and answer what you just said.
- Let go: by understanding, forgiving or holding them accountable
End the dialogue by releasing the unmet expectation, whether that comes with forgiveness or not.
- Say what was left unsaid to someone who has died
When grief is stuck on something unsaid, use the chair to finally say it to the person who died.
- Choose the gentler route when facing them is too much
Know when to stop confronting the imagined person and explore the memories with a listener instead.
Related concepts
- Shadow Work
Meeting the parts of yourself you have been ignoring
- Gestalt Therapy: Awareness, Ownership and Contact in the Here and Now
Noticing what you are doing right now, owning it in your own words, and finishing what keeps pulling at you
- Two-Chair Dialogue: Working With the Inner Critic and Other Inner Splits
Giving the critic and the criticized self each a chair, so the fight inside you becomes a conversation that can change
- Continuing Bonds in Grief, Made Practical
Maintaining an ongoing inner relationship with the deceased as a healthy part of grief
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